Conversation With my Inner Atheist

I try to be a rational, thinking, philosophical individual, and I always strive to be honest about what is true and real.  In being a thinking person, a reading and studying person I have the occasional doubt.  I think we all have some doubts here and there, when faced with so much opposition to Christianity, there is sometimes that doubt creeps in.  Sometimes, the reality of the supernatural, the extraordinary and the beyond comprehension is hard to grasp and hold too.  The literal creation, the existence of angels and demons, the miracles around Christ and the reality of His Resurrection and assertion can be more than my human brain can contain.

Those outside the faith assume I'm simply a Christian because I was taught, grew up in it, brain washed and I'm just a follower with blind faith.  In reality, I am an orphan who has every ability to walk away from the faith without much ramification.  At this point in my life, I have built much of my life on faith, but much of it was torn down for me.  I have a job that doesn't have anything to do with church, my kids are in public school, I could stop attending church.  I am not forced into my faith, and I have times where I wrestle with it's legitimacy.

I will agree with Gandi, and say that often Christians are so unlike Christ.  The Bible says the world will know we are Disciples of Christ because of our love for one another.  I have been hurt and slandered and mistreated more by people who claimed the cause of Christ than I have those outside the church.  That causes me to doubt that the Spirit is really working in lives, but then I see life change.  My friend Noah had a huge life change.  A guy I work with is having a huge life change, and it doesn't just happen.  People don't change like that, even prison and rehab can't make people change like Jesus does.  I see false converts, but I have also seen some great people changed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

There are lots of different faiths out there.  I enjoy reading about eastern thought and religion is appealing to me, but I can't believe it's real just because I think it's cool.  I have to look for what truth is revealed and I have seen evidence of God in life and in nature.  It would be easy to take a "whatever you believe" sort of stance and instead of questioning things, I could just accept everything without question.  It would be easy to say "hey, that's cool, whatever you want to believe" but it's not that simple.  Some things are wrong, they are contradictory to truth.  I feel that what I believe is true, otherwise I wouldn't believe it.  You can say that makes me close minded or narrow or whatever, but if you thought you were wrong, you wouldn't believe what you believe either.

Truth is, we all have things that lead us to our belief systems.  Some people get there through family or friends, some people though experience, some people through manipulation.  I'm no different, I came to believe in Christ through some family, through experience, through what I saw and how I felt God in my life.  As I've gotten older, I've seen more, learned great lessons, read the works of dead men who understood things I never will.  I have read opinions that deviate, seen science that claims there is no God, and spoken with atheists who are as sure as I am (so they claim).  I have talked with people from all over and see and heard a thousand opinions.  Some days I have a hard time.  Some days it seems like even my own faith is just a fairy tale, but we each have to wrestle with ourselves when it comes to our beliefs.  None of them come easily, not if they are worth having.  Examination and scrutiny will show you that sometimes those things which are the most true are the hardest to believe.

In these years, I have wrestled with theology.  I have fought with free will, with Calvinism, with scripture and with the reality of the Atonement.  These days I wrestle with the existence of time itself and how it works in relation to eternity and salvation.  It's not an easy journey, and those who find a faith easily today, they risk losing it tomorrow.  Wrestle with yourself,  if you are an atheist you will have to fight your inner saint.  Easterners may have to wrestle the inner Westerner and those of us with faith will have to fight doubt.  Fight through it and find the truth hidden in the midst.